


This living hand, now warm and capable

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Finntrospection, M/M, OTP Feels, five things, hand holding, wrestling with new canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-02-27 23:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13259256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: Five times Finn and  Poe held hands.(In progress.)





	1. rocks floating

**Author's Note:**

> It's all because of @plantblogger 's [gif of the out-of-frame handholding at the end of TLJ](https://twitter.com/plantblogger/status/944796398058221569). The first piece was on [my tumblr](http://spaceoperafeerie.tumblr.com/post/168905299969/tlj-spoilers-all-hail-plantblogger-on-twitter).
> 
> Then Orchis and Deputy encouraged me.
> 
> Title from [Keats](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50375/this-living-hand-now-warm-and-capable).

There’s no trusting your senses. Not here, not after the end of everything. Never stumbling, Skywalker stood against the First Order. On the other hand, everyone else they knew and loved is blasted beyond photons. Leia flew, then subsided, only to crumple away from certainty.

Nothing remains in place. Gravity goes threadbare, then vanishes. As the rocks lift, they go with a sigh. It’s a little like relief, slightly like exultation, to be heavy things suddenly free.

The survivors have to force themselves to see; after the dark tunnels, the glare of the salt, they are all dazzled, disbelieving.

The world is new and upside-down; the rocks hover like birds, then make way.

Then comes the pressure of a friend behind you, the blindly sure stroke of his fingers down your arm. Hands find each other, grasp and hold fast. This much is sure: his presence, yours, how “yours” grows to the plural and embraces you both.


	2. naked leaking, clothes sharing

Once Poe had hurried inside Finn into the hangar locker room, he grabbed a pile of folded things from a laundry sack. He pushed it into Finn's arms.

The bacta solution squirted all over them, too. It seeped around their feet and shivered with the motion of the ship itself.

"I should--" Finn looked down at himself, then back at Poe, eyes wide with appeal and a lot of confusion. Poe took back the pile and set it aside on the low bench.

"Right, we should get you out of that before you're into those, where the fuck is my head, get it together, Dameron." His throat was raw, his voice ragged, and even to his own ears, he sounded vicious.

But Finn just looked at him, calm and expectant. 

"I think it's back here?" Finn gestured at the back of his neck and shuffled around. "Could you get it? Sorry about your stuff, I--"

"It could all use a spritz, don't worry about it." Poe moved in so Finn could lean on him and he could reach the fastener on the suit. It unlatched easily. The recovery suit sprang off Finn and fell to the floor in five parts. They shrank in on themselves as the room filled with the bright, nearly herbal scent of bacta. For a moment, they might have been in a meadow at dawn before the fog burned off.

"Towel?" Poe asked. 

"Thanks," Finn replied. 

Finn stood before him, hand still on Poe's shoulder, naked as the day he was born. The bacta dried quickly on exposure to air, leaving just a few bright patches down the middle of Finn's chest. A stripe along his bicep, a spot where his stomach hollowed as he breathed. Poe had to look away. He knew he should look away. He was going to look away, soon as he could.

Finally, Poe tore himself away so he could dig out a towel. He pressed it wordlessly into Finn's open hand.

Finn bent to dry off his legs and Poe had to force himself to look away again, this time from the strong curve of Finn's spine, the buxom swell of his buttocks.

Poe leaned against the locker, the heels of his hands pressed against his eye sockets. Behind his lids, the bombers still dragged themselves into death over the dreadnought. An inexorable crawl, like the stick-jumper he'd seen once. Older kids had bashed it with a rock and left it when they got bored. Poe squatted in the mud and watched it lurch and creep back to the water. Its eyes dulled as Poe held his breath. It couldn't stop.

"Poe?" Finn touched his elbow.

Dropping his hands, Poe turned his head. He was about to grab for Finn's hand, hell if he knew why, but then he caught himself. He grinned and shook his head. "Yeah, buddy? Sorry, tired. Need...something."

"Sleep?" Finn smiled at him, so kind and _vital_ that Poe got perforated by guilt at the sight. Pricked right through, held up to the shame for its beams to pierce and dazzle. He shouldn't be here, shouldn't be able to enjoy Finn's smile, the bright glint in his eyes, the downright statuesque beauty of his body. All the promise of him, inscribed on him, radiating from him.

"That, too." He rubbed his face and took a breath, and then he could return Finn's smile and almost mean it. And then he _did_ mean it, sincerely, when he said, "Can't believe you're up, man. You're up! You're all right!"

Finn nodded and looked down at himself. He held the towel loosely over his crotch, less out of modesty than uncertainty about where to drop the towel. "Can I have some trousers?"

"You," Poe said, and had to swallow before continuing, "can have anything you want. Trousers, jersey. Jacket. Help yourself."

"I just need something that's not leaking. Dry."

"A good start, yeah." Poe handed him the trousers, then the shirt, and one warm sock. He had to get down on hands and knees to find the other sock, finally retrieving it from where it was lodged under one of his flight harnesses. He tossed it behind himself and when he turned, saw that Finn had caught it easily.

The thought of standing back up, of fighting gravity yet again, seesawed in his stomach. Poe stayed where he was, in a crouch, elbow braced for balance on the laundry sack.

"How's it feel?" he asked. Finn sat on the bench, one leg crossed over the other as he straightened the sock up his calf.

"Wearing clothes?" Finn asked. "Or consciousness?"

"Whatever, whichever," Poe said. "How do _you_ feel, I guess is the question."

"Surprised, mostly." Finn tugged the cuffs of Poe's jersey over his fists and lifted his shoulders. "Rey's really gone?"

Poe nodded. "She'll be back, though."

"Yeah." Finn looked down at his lap. "I'm cold, too. Is it cold here? I remember it being really warm before."

"Oh, buddy," Poe said, as the size of everything Finn **didn't** yet know revealed itself. Where was he supposed to start? "No, we're not on D'Qar. Not any more."

Finn nodded slowly as he took in Poe's explanation. It was a shitty explanation, with a lot of backtracking and copious over-generalization, but for the spur of the moment, it was decent, Poe thought. Perhaps not _decent_ , but at least adequate. The few questions Finn asked were about Rey and the _Falcon_ and Leia's relationship with Solo. (At the end, that is; even Poe, lifelong master of gossip and Leia-watching, couldn't hope to summarize their history in anything less than a standard lunar cycle.)

When Poe rose and joined him on the bench, Finn didn't move away so much as slip a bit to the side so Poe would fit. Then, as Poe settled, Finn eased back so they were tucked up against each other, Poe's hand on Finn's leg, Finn's hand over it.

He'd last sat here two hours ago, pulling on his boots, psyching himself up to fuck with Hux. He was a ghost in his own memories.

Or he would have been, he definitely _deserved_ to be, but for Finn here, accommodating him, breathing beside him, keeping him in the present.

"That would explain the noise," Finn said when Poe wrapped up: _so we evacuated D'Qar and now half the Order is on our asses_. "And the cold." 

"Nothing like shipboard cold," Poe said.

Agreeing, Finn nodded. His gaze sharpened suddenly. "Hey, what about you? You just got in, don't you need, like. A shower? Briefing?"

"I'm due for a dressing-down," Poe admitted. He wanted to throw himself back on the bench, toss his arm over his eyes, sigh dramatically and just avoid it all. Instead, he slumped against Finn and inhaled shallowly. "Any second now, actually. The dressing-down that other bad debriefs fear. Rather face Hux and Ren in hand to hand than this one."

"What happened?" Finn shook him gently by the shoulder, then, when Poe didn't respond, moved in a little closer. His hand slipped over Poe's and, after a moment, waiting to be denied, grasped tight. "Did you crash more priceless First Order aircraft, Poe Dameron?"

"Ha," Poe said. It was almost true, if what he used to crash were the last of the fleet's bombers. And personnel. All those souls dulling down, winking out. Onward they crawled, slow and heavy and doomed. He blinked fast and looked up at Finn. "Something like that. Also, most relevantly, I ignored a direct order."

"I wouldn't know anything like that," Finn said lightly. "Just a defector here."

"Yeah, but you--" Poe lifted their hands, searching for what he wanted to say, but found only shapes and volumes of feelings, no words. "You were right."

"You make the calls you have to make, in the moment, on the fly," Finn said. He spoke slowly, as if he were coming to understand something at the same time as he was explaining it to Poe. As if the thought itself only developed because they were thinking together. "Sometimes those calls don't work out. Doesn't mean that's what you wanted to happen."

"I really didn't want this to happen." It felt like a confession even though it was so brutally obvious.

"I figured," Finn said.

"You know me so well." Poe swallowed and tried to smirk, tried to make it sound flirtatious, deniable, but he couldn't. He was cold and tired, tethered here only by Finn's touch.

Finn smiled at him, tentatively, then more and more strongly. "Nah, I'm just making this all up as I go along."

"What a coincidence," Poe said and their hands were sweaty together, latched achingly tight, impossible to decouple. "Me, too. All the fucking time, as a matter of fact."

Finn blinked, then again, and Poe looked back, straight on.

For years afterward, Poe would claim that they _definitely_ would have kissed then, epically and for the first time, so memorably there would have been odes and dances for generations in the kiss's honor, except for BB-8 summoning him to go face Leia's wrath.

_Keep telling yourself that_ , Finn would respond and they'd grin at each other all over again.


	3. story telling, food sharing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are all my friends bottomless pits of pure gluttony or does it just feel like that?"  
>  "Huh?" Poe asks. "Oh, was this for everybody?"  
> "Supposedly, yeah," Finn says.  
> Finn tells stories bodily, makes gesture soliloquy, brings Poe a gift.
> 
> Post-TLJ, on the run in the _Falcon_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as ever to @orchis & @galacticproportions; "gesture...soliloquy" is a garbled quotation from Brodkey's _Runaway Soul_.

When Finn tells a story, he has to act it out. Ducks when TIE fighters close in, jabs two fingers to indicate blaster fire, leans all the way back in his seat as the fathier gallops up a cliff face.

He doesn't know how else to do it. Words aren't ever quite enough, but gestures, too, only go so far. There must be ways to improve. 

He does the best he can, _bodily_.

He's telling Rey about the melee he, Rose, and Cai got caught up in. They'd gone planetside to trade for food; Cai and Finn were the muscle, while Rose had a contact from back home. They'd escaped with their food and their lives, but had yet to catch their breath. 

Rey'd found him on his way back from unloading in the hold, waylaid him and claimed a (large) slice of the synth-jerky in his hand. Soon enough, Poe ambled by, then paused to listen. He tips his head against the bulkhead, sleepy eyes and dark jaw, listening like he's waiting for a signal.

Finn has to act out all the parts. Rose is back in the bunkroom and Cai's on watch, but really it's because Finn's still vibrating from excitement and worry. So much anxiety is surging through him that he can barely stay in his seat.

"So the leader, this tall lady, blue and violet speckles, really pretty until you realize they're venomous, with one chopped-off headtail, she's coming in _here_ \--" He holds out his left hand, palm down, while cutting his right hand in close on a steep angle. "--and then her backup, they're dropping in from the rafters like _doop-doop-doop_ and--"

He stops and looks around, suddenly, agonizingly aware that he has only two hands and far too large a narrative population. Rey's nodding and chewing on a second, larger chunk of synth-jerky. 

"What happened then?" she demands.

"Let me guess," Poe says. He drops onto the low crate wedged between them. "Cai let loose with an Abednedan shriek, bought you all some time but also dampened your hearing for a good hour or so, and Rose punched her way out, while you..." Cocking his head, he squints at Finn. "Blaster? Or did you try to talk? Negotiate, make a deal, even bring them on-side?"

"Those are my only options?"

Poe grins and leans back. "I've run enough errands and missions with you, man. So far as I can tell, those're your only moves." 

"I have other moves!" 

Poe's grin widens even more. "Well, those're your favorites, then."

Finn grabs for Rey's wrist as she helps herself to more jerky. "Tell him!"

She slips away easily, standing up, tucking the jerky in her belt. "I don't know, Poe's pretty knowledgeable about these kinds of things."

Finn is worked up enough that he can only protest with splutters and more pointless gestures. He doesn't think to ask what Poe's supposedly so knowledgeable about. Poe's good at lots of things: Looking handsome in a crisis; wisecracking at highly inappropriate moments; stoking courage where before there was only desperation. None of that is relevant here.

"Rey?" Finn pleads. "Back me up! Forget Poe!"

"Excuse you," Poe mutters. "I'm nigh on unforgettable."

Rey elbows Finn as she passes. "The first major mission I did with you, you kept grabbing my hand and yelling a lot."

"Jakku doesn't count!" he calls after her as she retreats down the passage. He scrubs his hand over his face and, catching Poe's eye, shrugs self-consciously. "Jakku should never count, ever."

"Agreed," Poe says, breaking off some jerky for himself. Chewing, he adds, "sandy hellhole of utter failure."

"Thank you," Finn says solemnly. Some of the frantic excitement that has been creeping and prickling over him since the fight starts to drain away. He sits back, arm folded behind his head, and takes a deep breath. "Where've you been, anyway?"

Poe shrugs, one brow lifting. "Here and there," he says, then, smirking, "around."

"Fine, don't tell me." Finn goes to grab some jerky before it's completely gone. He pokes the crumpled packaging. "Are all my friends bottomless pits of pure gluttony or does it just feel like that?"

"Huh?" Poe's chewing now, every bit as enthusiastically as Rey at her hungriest. He yanks the wrapper toward himself, leaving Finn grabbing thin air. "Oh, was this for everybody?"

"Supposedly, yeah," Finn says.

Poe grins and waves his free hand dismissively. "They can find their own snacks, they're grownups."

"We went down to get stuff for everybody."

"Yeah, yeah, more's the pity, they don't have an in with you, big guy." Poe pops the last piece into his mouth and leans back, crossing his legs and chewing ostentatiously. He looks so smug; Finn isn't sure whether he wants to deck the handsome fool or hug him.

Finn asks, "You think you've got an in with me, huh?"

"Well...." Poe chafes his palms up and down his thighs. He's been wearing some of Solo's old trousers, unearthed from deep in the hold. Once they were hemmed, they turned out to suit him very well. (Before the tailoring, Poe picked off the Corellian blood stripes stitch by stitch and presented them to a grave Chewbacca.) "I think I do, yes."

"Huh," Finn says. That's an interesting claim; he likes the sound of it, even if he's not quite sure what it means. He needs to figure out what that means.

He's got a lot of different things to process. 

Anxiety and exhilaration from the run, first of all. Though they're receding, they're far from gone. Irritation with Rey _and_ Poe, there's also that. Low-level, like a buzz in the airframe, but unshakeable sometimes. They like to act like they can push him around, like he likes being teased and questioned and undermined. They do this out of affection rather than cruelty, of course, he knows that. He just has yet to decide how he feels about it.

That kind of bravado permeates the ship; it's hardly particular to his friends. Everyone's given a hard time, little things are magnified to enormous crises, while the actual crisis they're living through never gets mentioned. Irreverence rules. No one talks very seriously at all, not if they can help it. 

"More than enough to worry about," Leia told Threepio when he chided her again, this time for making light of their fuel-reserves situation. "No need to discuss it to death, too."

He blustered and protested and looked around desperately for someone to back him up. For once, Finn narrowly avoided getting caught.

Unlike Threepio, Finn can't fault anyone for jocularity. What's more, he now has enough friends, close enough friends, that he _can_ get irritated by them. That fact alone is so ridiculous, so unexpected, that remembering it catches him by the throat and forces heat out his skull. He huffs out a breath and knuckles at his eyes.

Irritation is just irritation, nothing like a catastrophe.

"But the mission went okay?" Poe's asking now. The jerky is gone, save for a few crumbs of salt down Poe's front.

"Well, we made it back," Finn says, "and got all the food, even a little more. So, yeah. It just got really messy right at the end."

Poe's head bobs as he listens, a wavy lock of hair spilling over his temple. Even though he does tease Finn most of the time, you can't ever say he doesn't listen closely. "Nothing you couldn't handle, I bet."

"Ha," Finn says. His chest hollows for a moment, remembering the butt of the blaster digging against his back and the minions swarming closer. "Sometimes it's not handling anything. Just blind dumb luck."

"Pal, from where I'm sitting, you're good at everything you try." Poe kicks him lightly in the calf.

Finn snorts and shrugs, again, then a third time. Now Poe's just being ridiculous.

When he finally looks Poe in the eye, however, he sees nothing but seriousness there. A wide, sincere gaze and soft, kind mouth; all the irreverence is gone.

"Shit!" Finn barks, as he remembers, and twists around to dig out the slightly-greasy package from his jacket's inner pocket.

Poe leans with him. "You all right?" 

Finn reaches back blindly as his seat starts to tilt and creak. "Hold on, I've almost got it--"

Poe grabs Finn's flailing hand and holds tight. Finally, Finn gets the jacket's arm untangled from inside itself, which frees up the lining. He extracts the small package he'd stowed there just before the fight.

"Here, got it!" He yanks himself back upright, bumping into Poe's side. With Poe to his left, holding his left hand, while his right hand pushes the package toward Poe, Finn gets a vivid sense of how they must look. Like they're doing an obscure folk dance from far out in the Colonies, or getting married in an arcane and highly stylized ceremony. 

His face heating, Finn tries to tug free his hand but Poe smirks, faintly but discernibly, and squeezes.

"What's this?" Poe takes the package and sniffs it rather suspiciously.

"Dried koyo melon," Finn says. When he turns his hand inside Poe's grip, Poe doesn't relax the hold. He doesn't acknowledge Finn, either. That _might_ be the flicker of a glance from under his lashes, but it's impossible to know for sure. It's dark back here and Poe tends to be either remarkably easy to read or teethgrindingly, frustratingly opaque. "Got it for you."

His smile sudden and startled, Poe sniffs the package again. "No way!"

"Open it," Finn says. 

He'd traded three blaster bolts for the dozen slices of dried melon. Poe talks about how luscious the koyo is, unlike anything anywhere else in the galaxy. He's impossible to shut up once he gets going on any aspect of Yavin, especially its cuisine, specifically its various and toothsome fruit, but the koyo is particularly close to his heart.

"I can't believe this!" Poe shoves two slices at once into his mouth, then jabs another at Finn's chin. His voice is garbled, his cheek distended, but he tries to speak anyway. "Eat, man, you won't regret it."

The fruit really is delicious. Less sweet than Finn had expected, almost spicy, and the flesh is sinewy, almost crackling between his teeth.

"Huhhh?" Poe's asking, nodding, beaming, chewing messy as a bantha. Finn nods back, keeps it up as they chew and swallow and lick their lips. Mirroring each other, gulping and grinning like kids.

"Glad you like it," he says when it's quiet again.

"Like it?" Poe snorts a couple times, licks clean his fingers with great smacking sounds, and grips Finn's hand all the more tightly. "That was the best thing I've ever tasted. Ever in my long and fairly sordid life."

"Sure," Finn says. The merchant warned him that, dried, the koyo is a pale ghost of the rich flavor when its fully ripe and fresh. "If you say so."

"I do say so." Poe nods, serious again. His thumb traces slow lines up and down the back of Finn's hand.

Finn's tired now, suddenly and thoroughly. The fear and alertness from the fight have vanished. In their wake, he's warm, slow, thick-headed. A smile takes a long time; a blink does, too. Yet they keep happening, deepening, fluttering. He can't seem to stop, nor does he want to.

He tries, gently, to tug his hand free, one last time.

In response, Poe squeezes. Just as gently.

Poe might be smirking; his face is downturned, in shadow, so all Finn can make out is how the corner of his mouth deepens. The long line of his jaw. Jagged bob in his throat as he swallows.

"Don't tease me," Finn says quietly. He's so tired; it's been such a long day. He's just not up to it. "Please."

"I'm not." Poe weaves their fingers together. They look at each other, through shadows and fatigue, and their smiles are more suggestions than expressions. Gestures at the fact that they want to smile, want to keep talking, want to draw closer. Later, when they're better rested, more secure (or more desperate, odds are even). 

Just now, it's all a hastily sketched reference, a clasp and hint of a smile, marking the spot for the full story.


	4. finding reasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe gets quiet, Finn won't give up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Orchis & GalacticProportions, Tarasque & Hegemony. ♥ Gifspiration from [@poesddameron](http://poesddameron.tumblr.com/post/172009742209/oscar-isaac-star-wars-the-last-jedi-bts) on Tumblr.

> I found a reason / And the reason, dear, is you.  
>  [Velvet Underground](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2s45yv)

Poe gets quiet. It's not something he looks for, let alone welcomes, but it comes over him now and again. When it settles in, there's nothing you can do about that. Just have to wait out the quiet, or so Poe says.

"Where are you going?" Rey whispers when Finn slips from the sleeping platform and tiptoes around looking for his boots.

He looks at her without saying anything.

"Leave him alone," she says. "You know that's what he wants."

She's right, she's always right, but Finn shrugs and heads out anyway.

The night is warm. The marshy lowlands are still defrosting after the short, intense winter, so fog fills in the hollows. From the vantage point of their camp, up here on the jagged moraine, the tips of lowland trees appear to float above the lavender fog. As Finn checks each outbuilding, the animals in their pens snore and rustle but do not wake. The stink of them, of huge bodies worked hard, however, clings even as he sets out for the filtration works. Rose and Rey built it themselves out of old hyperdrive; it groans and creaks as the brackish, polluted precipitation sifts through the system.

On the far side of the platform that surrounds the works, Poe sits, back propped against one strut, legs out in front of him, hands loosely clasped in his lap. He's underdressed, even for the warmth tonight, and his shoulders roll in.

First, Finn slings their jacket around Poe's shoulders. Then he stands in front of him for a while, shifting his weight when he needs to, curling his toes. Finally he sinks down to a crouch so they're at eye-level. He takes Poe's hand between his own. Words alone aren't enough to capture Poe's attention, not in this quiet. Poe's hand is flat between Finn's palms, dry and still.

His eyes are lowered. The shadows hollow his cheeks and thicken his stubble.

"Hey," Finn says, "look at me?"

Poe never could turn him down. He lifts his gaze; the liquid surface of his eyes catches and glints. "Better?"

Without releasing Poe's hand, Finn brushes a lock of hair off Poe's temple, then, after several long moments, sits down heavily. 

Poe clears his throat. "What brings you by?"

"Trouble sleeping." Finn traces sinew and bone with his thumb.

"Yeah, that's going around, huh?"

"Where do you go?" Finn asks eventually. Their grasp has shifted, fingers lacing together now, Poe squeezing lightly every now and then.

"Right here," Poe says. "Sometimes other places." His eyes flicker away and half his mouth twists up. "Sorry, that was supposed to be funny."

"Hilarious," Finn replies. "I'm cracking up."

"I can tell."

Finn's anger and disappointment nudge at Poe's mood, sharpen it. "What do you want me to say?"

"I don't _want_ anything," Finn says. "That's not what I'm saying. It's not like that."

"What is it like? Tell me what it oughta be like, I'll try to, I don't know, make that happen."

"Poe," Finn says. He rocks to the side, pulling up one leg against his chest. "I don't want that."

"Be helpful," Poe says, tasting his own banthashit, just as sour and bitter as he'd expect it to be, "to tell me what you _do_ want."

He doesn't know how to do anything but feel like this. He's not even doing it; it is happening to him and he can't get away from it. All he has is rage and sorrow, fighting inside his ribcage, fangs and concussive blows.

"You're such a smart guy," Poe adds, trying to swallow the rancid snarl at the back of his throat. He might get quiet, but he never could shut up, not when he should. "You must know. Tell me."

Finn's hand is getting sweaty. He exhales, then says, "there's a lot of things I wish for, you know. Things I wish were different, better, safer, all of that."

"Yeah," Poe says.

"But not you."

"Yeah, I'm not likely to get much better than this."

"That," Finn says, and there's that voice, the sharp and insistent one, urgent, nearly swept away, "isn't what I fucking meant and you know it."

Out of the two of them, Finn's the steady and patient one, supposedly.

"Don't I?" Poe stares at him for a long while; his head drops suddenly, chin against his chest. _He's_ supposed to be the reckless one, brash and instinctual. "Fuck."

"I'm not going to fight you, you know." Finn brings their hands to his mouth and kisses Poe's knuckles. The brush of his lips is so light, it could be ignored, or mistaken for a breeze. Something accidental, misdirected, off-course. "I don't want to."

"Besides, you'd win." Poe is still looking down. He studies the weave of fibers covering the platform, notes where it's worn and needs darning. "No question about that."

"You are pretty decrepit," Finn replies. "Not exactly a fair fight."

"What is, these days?"

Finn rests his cheek against their hands. Poe moves his thumb along the edge of Finn's mouth. Poe slips forward, Finn leans to meet him, and after several adjustments and quiet, sigh-filled shifts, they're tangled up all over again. Finn has his head resting against Poe's shoulder, Poe's mouth resting against Finn's soft hair, just over his ear. Arranged like this, their bodies vault over their hands, each still holding the other.

"Always coming to rescue me." Poe rubs his cheek lightly against Finn's hair.

Finn snorts on his laughter. "No, hardly."

"Yes." It's something Poe will always believe, a truth that Finn won't ever be able to dislodge. Not quite hero-worship, since he is every bit as aware of Finn's shortcomings and flaws as he is Finn's strengths and virtues. Besides, worship suggests an activity; Poe's belief is deeper and stiller than something one does. It exists, like grief, like quiet, it makes itself known in every thought he has.

"Wish I could do something," Finn says, later, much later. They've rearranged a few times, kicked out legs and rolled shoulders and stretched against cramps and numbness. A sensible person, Rose or Rey or BB-8, would tell them to go back to camp already, lie down and get some sleep.

"Me, too," Poe says. As much as he'd like to say, _oh, buddy, you **do** do something_ , he doesn't. That's true but it's not enough. Nothing is, not when the quiet blows in and his chest gets to pounding and aching. He nips lightly at the top of Finn's ear and squeezes his hand. "Fix the galaxy, please, it shouldn't take you too long."

"In the morning, maybe," Finn tells him. "Busy right now."


End file.
